Evaluating a nutrition information policy in chain restaurants in Multnomah County, Ore.

The Foundation's program, Healthy Eating Research: Building Evidence to Prevent Childhood Obesity, was designed to support investigator-initiated research to identify and assess environmental and policy influences with the greatest potential to improve healthy eating and weight patterns among the nation's children.Multnomah County passed a menu labeling policy that will go into effect January 1, 2009, as only one of five jurisdictions in the U.S. to have passed such a policy. The aims of this study are to: (1) examine changes in awareness of nutrition information, nutrition knowledge, use of nutrition information, and caloric value of purchases; (2) examine changes in menu offerings in restaurants; and (3) describe differences in outcomes by age, gender, education, race/ethnicity, restaurant type, and restaurant location. Investigators will use a pre-post design with cross-sectional point-of-purchase surveys, restaurant environmental assessments and menu audits, and restaurant health inspection reports. Stratified sampling will be used to enroll sufficient numbers of low-income residents and people of color to allow investigators to describe differences in outcomes by income and race/ethnicity.